


Blood Relations

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: Blood, Blood Kink? Who Can Never know, High Fantasy AU, M/M, also there's an unsubtle Aubreyad reference, blood games, but also my chance to talk about organic badniks and how extremely gross that can get ❤️, dark knight for a dark sorcerer, making monsters in a time before electricity, this is an excuse to talk about premodern medicine and vulnerability through bloodletting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29466738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: Scenes from the study of the court sorcerer
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik & Agent Stone, Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone, You Could Read It As Gen If You Wanted To
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	Blood Relations

Sir Stone now knows exactly what happened, but at the time he’d been somewhat confused to find himself upside down. He’s usually good at not taking food or drink from strangers, but it was his week to do the poison-testing and he drew a short straw.

He came to with the pronounced scent of vomit and the uneasy sensation of blood sliding down the sides of his head. He was swinging a bit.

The court sorceror was scowling at him and smoking a cigar.

“That’ll do it. You can cut him down now. Sir Stone, your criminal tendencies will out—you were born to be hanged.”

Two of Stone’s more sympathetic colleagues hurried to lower him to the ground while Stone, newly resurrected, gasped and tried to collect his wits. He could hear the court physician spluttering.

“It’s not a big deal,” the sorcerer said. He took a drag on the cigar and talked through the smoke. “Few swings to get things moving and then you pump smoke into the lungs and let downward tendency do the job. If the bowels press on the diaphragm this way and that, you end up with sufficient impetus to hork it all up. Did it to cats all the time when I was a whelp.”

“But— but a poisoning!”

“Hence the bleeding. This was fun while it was a project but explaining myself to you is a waste of my incalculably precious time, so I’m going to leave.” He turned and glanced down at Stone. “See me in my study once your legs function again.”

Stone coughed. The cough was an affirmative, but when the sorcerer’s response as a hardening of the eyes Stone realized he hadn’t been understood.

“Life debt ’n’ that,” he added. “Ciao.”

He stepped on the cigar on the way out. Stone took one look at his wide-eyed fellow guards and scrambled after him.

* * *

Robotnik, unlike any other court magician Sir Stone has ever heard of, is not a Magister. He’s a doctor of medicine and law and of the Church, as well, no matter how much he jokes about bursting into flame every time he sets foot in a chapel. Stone can imagine his university years with startling ease; between his voracious intellectual appetites and his careless black robes, anyone would think he was a student, were it not for his taste in extravagant shoes and the lines around his eyes.

Stone first saw him during his tenure in the king’s guard. For someone trained to see and neutralize danger, Robotnik was hard to miss. Their king’s political philosophy ran warlike, which meant that keeping the kingdom protected by a powerful sorcerer included having that self-same sorcerer sit in attendance of the kingdom’s business with that glacial look in his gold-brown eyes, contempt like a bruise thinly veiled on his face.

It was worse when Robotnik was guarded by members of the king’s entourage. It couldn’t have escaped the sorcerer that the guards were spies as well as protection. The raptor pecked brutally at his golden cage.

“God’s balls. Men at arms don’t guard monsters,” the captain of the guard growled, pulling off his helmet at the end of his shift. “We kill them.”

A curly-haired lad gnawed his lip. “But can he be killed, captain?”

Stone chewed his cheek so as not to smile. He didn’t know the answer himself, but he hoped not. There were none so blind as those that would not see. Until he’d watched the doctor work, he’d almost convinced himself that miracles didn’t happen in the modern age.

He’d seen a Bosch before. The sorcerer’s study made it look like Giorgione. Stone loved the smell of the place, tart with the boilings of chemicals and softly greasy from the wax which the doctor used for his sutures. Every time he entered it seemed there were new animals of unfathomable provenance dangled from hooks on the ceilings, covered in a fine dust as their bodies dried and their mystical potency ripened. Ornate cabinets were full to the brim with jars containing whole beings, or portions of them, halted forever in the moment of their demise by the pus-colored fluid that was the doctor’s proprietary amber. Stone had even seen the cavity dug out of the wall, locked by enchantments and hidden by a painting, and inside it the velvet-lined box of thin vials all containing stoppered quantities of the doctor’s blood.

The doctor didn’t like to be asked questions when he was working, so Stone kept his mouth shut. But he paid attention. When the doctor’s hands grew slower with his quill, Stone rang for coffee. When the doctor leapt out of his seat and tossed bricks of charcoal into the fire for a new experiment, Stone moved to stand near the bucket of water. When the doctor paused, out of breath and covered in blood, Stone had a fine and soft towel ready to offer him.

He should’ve been ashamed of himself, awed and enthralled like a child over a little sleight of hand. But magic to children is often trickery to men; magic to men is something altogether different. Stone loves it because in the doctor’s study there is no veneer of performance or supple chicanery: the doctor himself was no less in awe of his magic. When he brings to life a thing of shining iron scales and long throats full of chambered fire, the tenderness in his eyes and in his smile as he passes a hand down the spiny back is far more devastating to Stone’s peace of mind than the cataclysm that soons wracks the countryside.

But then, he’s never had much interest in agriculture.

* * *

“There’s a more efficient way to do this,” Robotnik says, running the blade of the black-handled knife through the flame of a candle, “but it’s escaped me so far. Now, I _could_ open an artery and get this done in a cool 15 seconds, but _someone_ is too much of a Nervous Purvis to agree to act as assistant in the advancement of occult medical science, so I have to take the scenic route.”

Stone fingers the pile of clean linen rags and watches Robotnik push up his heavy white sleeve. “I just think safety is a pretty substantial aspect of efficiency, is all. Are you ready for the goblet, doctor?”

“Depends. Did you complete the necessary ablutions?”

Sir Stone did. For three days he has to eat a severely restricted diet and abstain from liquor. He’s washed in an herbal bath precisely calculated to cleans his soul. Moreover, the doctor ordered him not to dally with courtiers of any stripe, which Stone took to mean no sex.

“Clean as a whistle.”

“Sharp as a thistle,” Robotnik mumbles. Knife held between his fingers, he begins to tighten the leather loop around his upper arm. He wiggles against the hard stone table. “Remember that my body is enchanted to self-immolate if I die, so you’d better treat me right while I’m out.”

“Hmm. Did you swallow gunpowder again?” Stone intones, smiling when the doctor’s eyebrows bobble boyishly on his forehead.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that. Let a man maintain his mystique.”

Stone glances around the room once more, idly prodding the hearth arm deeper into the fire. The doctor’s blankets and a small fortune in furs sit soaking up the heat from the lip of the hearth, but a mild tea will help rehydrate him once it’s over. He likes the peppermint one.

“I won’t let you die,” Stone promises.

“Confidence! The fool’s substitute for intelligence. Great to see it. How exactly are you going to ensure that, Stone? One extra spoonful here or there, and—” The doctor makes a nasty noise with his mouth, then sits rigid and staring like a corpse.

“I’ll be watching your pulse. I'll keep an eye on the rate of blood flow. And as soon as you faint you’re getting bandaged and carried to bed.”

“The hell I am. My blood can’t be left open to miasma that long!”

“It’ll be in the goblet. I’ll cover it with a saucer, like you showed me.”

The doctor let Stone help him bleed a black goat once. It was highly educational, even if they didn’t get to eat the thing afterwards. Something about mystical residue. A shame; Stone has an old field recipe for goat stew that he’d like to share with the doctor.

Robotnik squints at him, but through the tower window the moon is climbing and its light spreads to the edges of the doctor’s careful sigils.

“Showtime.” The doctor leans down and takes the tourniquet between his teeth. “All aboard for a round-trip to Erebus. I’m not relaying any messages after what your grandfather called me last time, so don’t ask.”

“I won’t. I think we reached a diplomatic impasse, anyway.”

The doctor grins, or bears his teeth. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Stone tries not to wink.

Fresh from the flame, the knife darts in five quick slashes along the undefended pallor of his inner arm. Blood dark as an uncut garnet wells and fills the soft pink slits in the doctor’s body. Fat drops roll from the wounds down over his skin, crossing perfectly-healed scars from previous rituals, and falls freely into the goblet in Stone’s hand.

Stone’s mouth goes dry. The blood moves in the gold cup like a syrupy wine, heavy and fortified. He would have to get closer to smell it, which would certainly result in unhappy screeching, so he contents himself with watching the way the blood drips and ripples from the infinitely tiny moments of his hands.

This blood had lately passed through the chambers of the doctor’s heart. One misstep, one startling noise, and Stone could dash it to the floor. He forces his breath to deepen and match the doctor's.

On the table, the doctor’s face tightens and contorts as discomfort becomes pain. The muscles of his jaws bulge as his long fingers flex rigid and curl tight, flex and curl. A tiny deluge of Biblical character pummels the goblet, and two drops miss and scorch the back of Stone’s hand.

The tourniquet falls slack and the doctor’s body slumps. All the agony in his face disappears as if by magic. Stone grabs the gauze and grips Robotnik’s arm hard enough to bruise.

He has only moments to work. He lids the goblet and sets it carefully aside so he can get close. Robotnik is defenseless in this ecstatic sleep so close to death; his soul a thousand thousand worlds away while his body struggles to move the sluggish bead of blood he’s still allowed himself. The doors are warded and locked, but there’s no real fear of traitors or assassins when even a single additional drop could unmoor him from his earthly craft.

Stone wraps the wound tight, ignoring the wasted red stain on his knuckles, because that won’t be the drop that does him in.

The doctor’s cold skin and exhausted body sags heavy on the table. His bones feel loose and pointy when Stone gathers Robotnik up into his arms and carries him away from the altar. Stone prepared the bed with furs and pillows to try and make a more comfortable nest—lack of use means the mattress is still stiff at the best of times. He hurries to the blankets by the fire and drapes them meticulously around and under the doctor’s long legs. Robotnik makes a lost, dizzy, contented sound when Stone presses a fur over his chest with his whole hand.

The goblet is still warm when Stone returns. He has twenty tiny vials to fill and stopper before he’s done, and to his delight they have enough blood to fill three more. The doctor will be delighted at such a substantial catch.

But then, he’s easy to delight after he’s bled.

When the blood is locked safely away, Stone tidies up a little and pours the tea. He draws a chair beside the sorcerer’s bed and sits with one hand on the pommel of his sword and the other slipped into Robotnik’s cold palm. His pulse is too reedy to feel, but Stone can see him breathe. It seems to have been a very successful ritual, but he’ll only know how successful when the doctor is back with new information from whichever dark caverns his mind wandered.

Time for a treat. Stone pours himself a cup and sits back, one eye on the door as he laps the stain from his knuckle.

He settles in to wait.

* * *

“Twenty-three?” Robotnik sighs. “Stone. You’re a star.”

He grins like a child, shaky hands touching the top of each black stopper in the velvet box.

“Easy enough when there was so much to spare,” Stone murmurs. He sets a spoonful of broth at the doctor’s lip and coaxes him to drink. “What’s our first project, doctor?”

“Took a dip in the Phlegethon.” Indeed he did. The fever isn’t rising any higher, but his body is still hard at work regaining its strength. “I’m making a bomb. This place needs a good explosion.”

“Hours of fun,” Stone murmurs. He passes a soft cloth across the doctor’s forehead. Robotnik sighs and turns his head to follow Stone’s hand.

“Twenty-three. It’s a prime number, Stone. Extremely beautiful. You’ll have a reward.”

Stone bows his head. “You’re generous, doctor. Thank you. It’s not necessary, though...”

“I’ll make you a toy.” Robotnik giggles. “A pet for my pet. Think of something good, will you?”

Stone gazes at him. Listless as a new kitten, Robotnik’s aching body is no match for his whirling mind. His hazy eyes and dreamy smile are all elation, belying the sacrifice of his body in favor of the work and the art he loves so dearly. Stone strokes his hair back from his burning forehead and gets a little coo in response.

He’s sweet as anything, when Stone’s drawing him out of Hades’ embrace.

Stone lifts the spoon again. “I am, doctor.”

* * *

The doctor prefers to spend any time out of his study in the dovecote.

Sir Stone doesn’t like it as much as the study, but at least it’s a pretty place. The doctor had it built as a perfect circle riddled with six short hallways leading to a central hexagonal shaft. Two stories and tapered ceilings of plastered brick permit of roosts for four thousand inhabitants. Stone isn’t versed enough in numerology or algebra to know the occult significance of any of these numbers, but the tactician in him sees how so many yet-unfilled roosts speak to the doctor’s ambitions.

The sun has barely reached its morning strength when the doctor tires of the day’s tasks.

“Tedious!” he declares, tossing a tome of priceless antiquity onto his stained butcher’s table. “Enough. Come, Stone.”

Stone follows at his master’s hem through the tower towards the dovecote. There’s nothing for him to fear from this place any more. No matter how thirsty they might be, the doctor’s experiments have been expertly trained to see him as a companion, rather than a meal.

The doctor makes loud kissing and crooning noises as soon as his slipper crosses the threshold. “Where are my babies? Papa's here."

Chirps and scufflings rise through the air. They flock to their creator until he’s surrounded by pudgy, round creatures no bigger than Stone’s fist, all hovering on their rapid wings. They have no heads, but each has a huge single eye, like a squid, which shows neither joy nor fear but only dilates and constricts as they observe the change to their environment.

The doctor holds out a gloved wrist and an experiment eagerly perches on it, taloned feet digging deep. He coos at it, nuzzling the tip of his nose against it while he traces his fingertips through the thin white hair that covers its body.

“They missed you, doctor,” Stone observes.

“Of course they did! So boring being _good_ , being _indoors_. My poor little monsters. You just want to have a little explore, don’t you?”

A few of the experiments come to hover around Stone, beeping like birds. They have tight little voiceboxes and tiny lungs, but they make their attention known as they bully him away from their creator so they have more room to swarm Robotnik. Taloned feet clutch at the straps and buckles of his harness so the pets can have a rest while they examine him. Their blank gelid eyes widen and narrow and their mouths open along the bottom of their bodies to bare their sharp stylets and tap lightly at his chest.

Cute little buggers. Stone rubs a thumb over the top of one and smiles as it bristles, flaps of flesh standing up to show the bony darts of homemade poison ripening under its skin.

“There, there,” he mutters. “Just me, baby bird.”

“They’re so much more advanced than birds, Stone! And they’re just starving for fun. I think they remember how you squeak when you’re hit.”

“I didn’t know you’d given them a sense of humor, doctor.”

The sorcerer lays a finger on Stone’s chest and the creature clutching Stone’s top fastener hops onto his master’s hand.

Robotnik grins. “Whaddaya know. It’s in their blood.”


End file.
